6 Critical Features Of A Mobile Friendly Website Design

By Peter Ehat on September 7th, 2014

Having an internet presence is a must for all businesses, but maintaining a mobile website is just as important as a full-scale website today. More and more users are visiting websites with mobile phones and tablets, making it important to build a website optimized for mobile viewing.Here are six tips to build a strong mobile website:

1. Make Navigation Easy
Keep the end user in mind when designing the website and keep it simple. Make any scrolling top to bottom instead of side to side. Make sure users can find anything they are searching for quickly, without having to navigate between multiple pages. If your homepage contains a great deal of information, consider utilizing a simple menu as your mobile homepage for simpler navigation.

2. Clear CTA’s
Mobile devices are much smaller than traditional desktop or laptop computers, and mobile pages should be built keeping that in mind. Make any clickable call to action (CTA) on your website large enough that misclicks will be easy to avoid. The minimum recommended size for any CTA is roughly 44 x 44 pixels, in addition to making sure there is ample space surrounding the CTA. Make sure they stand out on the webpage so a user does not have to search around for them.

3. Optimize Media
Mobile devices are less powerful than most typical computers so it is important to make sure pages can load quickly without as much computing power in order to optimize your media. Strip your website of any videos or large media files and consider using lower resolution images if it is possible without sacrificing quality. Crop any images you can and replace resource-intensive JavaScript libraries with the simpler, standalone Javascript whenever possible.

4. Keep Content Simple
Mobile users are more likely to be looking for a quick reference or answer, so keep all content to a bare minimum on a mobile-focused website. If you include too much content, visitors are likely to navigate away and not return. Instead, provide quick, focused content that is well-spaced and legible on even the smallest devices.

5. Include Click-to-Call
Estimates find that just over 80% of conversions induced from a mobile visit occur within the first five hours. Conversions include activities such as a purchase, phone call, or physical store visit. Since it is so important to make a strong first impression, it is critical to make the initial contact as simple as possible. Click-to-call functionality allows an end-user to call a number with only one click, making it much easier than writing the number down and then calling.

6. Test, Test, Test
There are a great variety of operating systems, hardware and system configurations between mobile phones and tablets. Make sure you test your website on the widest variety of devices possible to make sure you aren’t alienating a segment of your potential clientele.

A strong mobile website can be challenging to build, but it will help a significant portion of your customer-based interact with your brand in new and exciting ways. Building a mobile presence will give you a significant competitive edge over your competitors, which is something that is always worth striving for.

6 Critical Features Of A Mobile Friendly Website Design was last modified: April 28th, 2017 by Peter Ehat